


The Hero You Want to See

by ilostmyshoe



Category: New Avengers (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), Young Avengers
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Gen, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:11:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7064698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilostmyshoe/pseuds/ilostmyshoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kitty meets with Billy to pass on some of her martial arts training. It doesn't exactly go smoothly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hero You Want to See

“Why are we doing this, again?” Billy leaned against the padded wall of the gymnasium and tried to keep his voice level, like an adult asking a practical question instead of a kid whining. A twitch at the corner of Kitty’s mouth suggested he might not have been quite as successful as he'd hoped.

“Mostly because Bobby asked me to. But also because he’s right—you depend way too much on your powers.”

“So why doesn’t he teach me himself?”

Did she wince? Or was that just his imagination? If so, it was gone in an instant; her face was impassive as she counted off reasons on her fingers. “A: I’m better at hand-to-hand combat than Bobby is. B: I have more teaching experience than he does. C: I was trained by the best. D: All of the above. Take your pick, but quit stalling and run the sequence.”

“I’m not...” Hearing more whine creeping, Billy cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m not stalling. Seriously. It’s just that...I just don’t like violence, okay? Nine times out of ten, I can use my powers to stop people without hurting them. Learning physical violence as an alternative has, like, zero appeal.”

Kitty sighed. “You don’t have to like violence. It doesn’t have to be your go-to response when there’s a problem. But when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you know there’re about a billion things that can stop you from using your powers, and when one or more of those things inevitably happens, you need to be prepared. That’s all we’re saying.”

He must have looked more skeptical at that than he meant to, because she added, “I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

“It’s not. I know it’s not.” Billy sighed and rolled his shoulders.

“Okay,” Kitty held up the spotting mitts. “Let’s start simple: jab, hook, hook, cross. Left, right, left, right.”

Billy ran through the sequence a couple of times at half speed, then started to speed up.

“Watch your form. Don’t hyperextend in the cross. Good, now try southpaw.”

Billy switched his stance, but kept flubbing the start of the combination, wanting to lead with his left instead of his right. After the fourth time he made the same mistake he turned and punched the wall. “Frak. Frak. Frak!”

Kitty put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “Okay, what’s up with you? Clearly something happened since our last training session.”

“I just...fuck.” Billy punched the wall one more time, then slid down to the floor, ending with his elbows resting on his drawn-up knees and his head in his hands.

Kitty sank gracefully to sit cross-legged in front of him. “Seriously. Spill.”

“It’s nothing. It’s stupid. I—” Billy swallowed. “I recently had a...thing where I wasn’t...myself. You know, one of those ‘ancient demon from another reality possesses your body with the long-term plan of killing all of earth’s heroes’ things.” He forced a half smile at Kitty in acknowledgement of how ridiculous it all sounded.

She smiled back at him reassuringly. “Of course. Sure. One of those. We’ve all been there.”

“Right?” His smile became a touch more genuine, then faded. “So, anyway, while I was, ah, ‘under the influence,’ I did stuff I’d never, ever do under normal circumstances—stuff that played fast and loose with people’s lives, you know? Teddy stopped me before it went too far—with some help from these, like, future Avengers—but it was…I don’t know, a demonstration of everything I never want to be.”

“And hand-to-hand fighting feels more like evil-you’s m.o.?”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugged.

Kitty thought for a minute and extended her right leg into a hurdler hamstring stretch, nodding to Billy to copy her. “Look, I know alternate dimensions and timelines and whatever screw with your head. I’ve seen more of ‘em than I can count at this point—some I’ll never be able to forget. I still have nightmares about the version where the Nazis won World War II. Meeting an alternate me, raised in a concentration camp and practically a living ghost. Seeing my teammates—friends—as Nazis. Knowing that if things were a little different then these people—my family, basically—would see me as less than human...

She switched to stretching her left leg. “And don’t get me wrong: I’m not pretending we live in the best of all possible worlds. Yeah, there are realities and dimensions far, far worse than this one, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of bigots here as well—people who hate me for being Jewish, or a mutant, or who hate other minorities just because they’re different. That’s why it’s important for people like us to have as many tools as possible to protect people who need protecting. Including ourselves.”

“’People like us’ meaning minorities?” Billy kept his eyes focused on his hands reaching towards his toes. Kitty touched his shoulder and he turned to look at her.

“’People like us’ meaning _heroes_. Though I think there’s a lot of power in seeing a hero who’s like you, especially for kids—a mutant or Jewish or...”

“Gay?”

“Or gay, definitely. And when you help people, you can’t exactly give them your powers, but anybody can learn self-defense.”

Billy made a face. “And we’re back to the idea of using violence to solve problems.”

“Not necessarily.” Kitty shrugged. “You know, I’ve been teaching you a mix of different techniques from around the world, because that’s basically how I was taught. But one of the sources I’ve been drawing on is Krav Maga.”

“The Israeli one? Isn’t that supposed to be one of the most violent martial arts? Am I supposed to be more okay with it just because it’s Jewish?”

Kitty put up her hands. “Whoa, no, slow down. My point is that Krav Maga was developed in the lead-up to World War II first by boxers in Czechoslovakia who wanted to protect their Jewish neighborhoods from anti-Semitic violence, and later by soldiers in Israel protecting Jewish refugees. A huge part of the discipline is to avoid confrontation whenever you can—so you develop situational awareness and have this arsenal of potential tools, physical _and_ verbal steps you can take, ways to identify escape routes, et cetera, to deescalate situations and _prevent_ violence. It’s not something Logan really covered much in my training, but I’d be up for looking into it more together, if you want.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’d like that.” Billy smiled.

“For now, though, we still need to get your physical workout in.” Kitty seamlessly rose from the ground and attacked the practice dummy with a flurry of elbows, kicks, and knees. She repeated the sequence three times and turned to look at Billy expectantly.

“Just like that, huh?” He asked, reluctantly dragging himself to his feet.

“Go slower if you need to. This time,” Kitty grinned at him. “Just be careful with your form. I’d rather see slow with good technique than fast and sloppy. Okay. Three minutes. And...go!”

**Author's Note:**

> This is meant to take place shortly after volume 1 of The New Avengers: A.I.M. I'm honestly nowhere near caught up with Kitty in current canon, so this is mostly based on her earlier appearances, especially during her time in Excalibur.
> 
> As always, eternal thanks to [stars_inthe_sky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky/works) for her help beta reading on super short notice, and especially for lending her opinion/expertise proofing this for the collection as someone who is Jewish. Any and all errors and imperfections are mine.


End file.
